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A treasure hunter said
he has located the wreck of a British merchant ship that was torpedoed by a
German U-boat off Cape Cod during World War II while carrying what he claims was
a load of platinum bars now worth more than $3 billion.
If the claim proves true, it could be one of the richest sunken treasures ever
discovered.
But an attorney for the British government expressed doubt the vessel was
carrying platinum. And if it was, in fact, laden with precious metals, who owns
the hoard could become a matter of international dispute.
Treasure hunter Greg Brooks of Sub Sea
Research in Gorham, Maine, announced that a wreck found sitting in 700 feet
of water 50 miles offshore is that of the S.S. Port Nicholson, sunk in 1942.
 (Sub
Sea Research LLC is a privately held limited liability
Corporation based in Portland , Maine USA . Founded in 1984 by Greg and Kathy
Brooks and joined by Lois and John Hardy as principal partners in 1993, the
company has achieved a continued steady success rate in locating and recovering
researched historic shipwrecks worldwide and continues to develop the Shipwreck
Institute of Maine Project, as well as a planned maritime museum in Haiti.)
He said Wednesday that he and his crew identified it via
the hull number using an underwater camera, and he hopes to begin raising the
treasure later this month or in early March with the help of a remotely operated
underwater vessel.
"I'm going to get it, one way or another, even if I have to lift the ship out of
the water," Brooks said.
The claim should be viewed with skepticism, said Robert F. Marx, an underwater
archaeologist, maritime historian and owner of
Seven Seas Search and Salvage LLC in Florida. Both an American company and
an English company previously went after the contents of the ship years ago and
surely retrieved at least a portion, Marx said. The question is how much, if
any, platinum is left, he said.
"Every wreck that is lost is the richest wreck lost. Every wreck ever found is
the biggest ever found. Every recovery is the biggest ever recovery," Marx said.
Brooks said the Port
Nicholson was headed for New York with 71 tons of platinum valued at the
time at about $53 million when it was sunk in an attack that left six people
dead. The platinum was a payment from the Soviet Union to the U.S. for war
supplies, Brooks said. The vessel was also carrying gold bullion and diamonds,
he said.
Brooks said he located the wreck in 2008 using shipboard sonar but held off
announcing the find while he and his business partners obtained salvage rights
from a federal judge. Salvage rights are not the same as ownership rights, which
are still unsettled.
Britain will wait until salvage operations begin before deciding whether to file
a claim on the cargo, said Timothy Shusta, an attorney in Tampa, Fla., who
represents the British government. He said it is unclear if the ship was even
carrying any platinum.
"We're still researching what was on the vessel," he said. "Our initial research
indicated it was mostly machinery and military stores."
The U.S. government has not weighed in on the court case yet, and Brooks said he
doubts that will happen, since the Soviets eventually reimbursed Washington for
the lost payment.
A U.S. Treasury Department ledger shows that the platinum bars were on board,
Brooks said, and his underwater video footage shows a platinum bar surrounded by
30 boxes that he believes hold four to five platinum ingots each. But he has yet
to bring up any platinum, saying his underwater vessel needs to retrofitted to
attach lines to the boxes, which would then be hoisted to the surface by winch.
"Of course there are skeptics," he said. "There's skeptics on everything you
do."
Maritime law is complicated, and there could be multiple claims on the ship's
contents.
After the sinking of the HMS Edinburgh,
an English warship carrying Soviet gold bullion as a payment to the allies
during World War II, England, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had claims on the
sunken treasure, Marx said. A consortium that owned the salvage vessel was given
10 percent of the prize, while the rest was shared by the other parties, he
said.
In other big finds, treasure hunter
Mel Fisher made
international headlines in 1985 when he discovered a $450 million mother lode of
precious metals and gemstones from a Spanish galleon that went down off Florida
in 1622.
In another case, a Tampa exploration company has been ordered by the courts to
return $500 million worth of treasure from a Spanish warship to Spain. The ship
was sunk by the British navy during a battle off Portugal in 1804.
Associated Press writer David
Sharp in Portland, Maine, and researcher
Barbara Sambriski in New York contributed to
this story.
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